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Mom and questions

6/1/2015

4 Comments

 
324.  Past

My family

Mom

Mom and questions 

In her young years my mom wasn't all that well. She taught school, was good on the job, but when home she needed rest and my dad did most of the chores.  She had Crones disease and was operated on and had some of her intestine removed.  She was often moody and inconsistent and emotional and demanding.  She lived until she was 89, but the last 5 years she was not well at all.  I recall how as a young man I had bad allergies and some asthma.  She was not always the most sympathetic.  Maybe she just lacked the raw energy to be, and didn't have the reserve for one more negative in her life.   Whatever the reason, she was not a nourisher.

Well, the last two years of her life she suffered a total breakdown of her body. Piece by piece it caved in on her.  We had good long distant conversations and she didn't complain to me, maybe a noble act.  My sister called her a “silent sufferer.”  We both expected more complaining, something she had done when younger.  But she kept just to herself.

One day on the phone with my sister, she said “I wonder if mom is suffering so greatly because of some kind of retribution?"  Hmmm.  Everything that could go wrong with her did.  One medical treatment contradicted another with no coordinating center.  The doctors she always had worshiped ended up not being of much help and there was nowhere to turn.  So she suffered silently. Was some of this pain from wrongs she had committed?  Personally when she ignored me or was impatient with my discomforts, was this a payback?  How about others she did not sympathize with?  Or was this from some spiritual denial?  Was this caused by a character flaw?

Does it really work this way?  Am I any better?  Won't my flaws become apparent?  Don't I deny too?  Was mom just another flawed person who through fate met an unpleasant end?   Or are there levels, and each level has an appropriate suffering?  

Somehow, someway, it was probably a touch of everything plus something mysteriously more.




4 Comments
JTL
6/1/2015 12:16:08 pm


Hi Steve (from a friend you met at Sharon Koskoff's party):

I was attracted to your theme of "mom and retribution" in Forthesetimes, and am now observing my similarly distant mother going through dementia and confinement to the "home" against her will at 85 (her "prison" she calls it). I have to comment that even though humans think in terms of retribution, or karma, or whatever they call it, the universe is random, and suffering is the human lot. The Baby Boomer parents, the Greatest Generation, were notoriously long-suffering, silent, and undemonstrative of their love for us, their children, so we just have to accept that and try to help where we can (even by long distance or email), and not add to their suffering. A book I sent to my sister about the breakup of the family home (which my dad is going through right now with the help of 2 of his 4 daughters -- definitely not me!) is "The Children's Crusade" by Ann Packer, available now at Costco for $15.00, or on Amazon. It talks about attachment disorder as a common phenomenon in families before Attachment Parenting became a conscious choice for our generation wanting to do things differently. (See Mayim Bialik for Jewish Attachment Parenting -- she was here speaking at David Posnack JCC at Shavuot, but like most in Hollywood, was not sufficiently attached to her husband not to get divorced.) The home breakup is literal in the book, with the homestead being torn down (ours is only being sold, and all the family antiques dispersed), but as I send a "Sympathy on the Loss of Your Dad" card to a friend today, I'm counting my blessings, and hope you come to as well. Hang in there, and keep writing.


Love,
J

Reply
steve
6/1/2015 12:18:23 pm




Today at 6:19 PM







J,

thanks for very thoughtful response. Let me digest it. Would you mind if I posted it on the site. I can use initials if you want privacy or even another name so u have anonimity. It's good food for thought.




In the meantime i'll digest and get back.




Ditto, steve

Reply
JTL
6/1/2015 12:20:22 pm




Today at 9:08 PM









Yes, you can post it with JTL if you like -- we're all going through this at our age, and there are hard choices and unresolved issues for everyone. I liked the Mom and Care post. You're a good son, and I hope I can be a good daughter to my parents. Seems my children have as many issues with me in spite of Attachment Parenting Theory. (The lyrics are from Joni Mitchell's "The Circle Game" if you change wheels to seasons. "The Circle of Life," perhaps?)

And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return we can only look
Behind from where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game


Unless you mean "The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round" which I sang to my kids when they were little! Lol!

Cheers,J

steve
6/1/2015 09:39:51 pm

J
You bring up many rich issues, each deserves so much thought and time. First, re the song, yes of course, Joni Mitchelle. You remember the song.
The thoughts on that generation and their coolness deserves a year of pondering. An indifferent universe? Again Don Draper when asked about this replied the same. It does seem that way, but there also seems like there are hints and signals given to us, certain switches of dimensions kind of alerting us to other rhythms and awareness. It could be fear, it could be 'life is a bitch, suck it up' that leads us to want this. Or it could be more. But as u say retribution and karma wrap it up too neatly.
You do have my curiosity on the book by Packer, and of what Bailick has to say. I am not up on the meaning of attachment parenting or disorder. I could be off, but what I am intuiting from what all this might mean is very heavy. Put simply it is not just illness and death of parents we are dealing with. It is the death of the family as we know it that is also being lost. This is heavy. We thought we would move on as individuals but somehow the core of family would remain in the background. But its giving way and in a sense we are left adrift. Yes, this is heavy.
Your wit about the house and antiques and divorce is noted.
Ok, thanks for connecting.

s

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    Steven B. Nussdorf records his lifelong search to find meaning outside of the normal channels.  He  uses writing, poetry, and drawing to document this effort.

    Write something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview.

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